Thursday, 10 October 2019

Start thinking about numbers and they can become large very quickly. The diameter of the universe is about 8.8×1023 km and the largest known number—googolplex, 1010100—outranks it enormously. Although that colossal concept was dreamt up by brilliant mathematicians, we're still pretty limited when it comes to assessing quantities at a glance. 'Humans have a threshold limit for instantly processing one to four elements accurately', says Adrian Dyer from RMIT University, Australia; and it seems that we are not alone. Scarlett Howard from RMIT and the Université de Toulouse, France, explains that guppies, angelfish and even honeybees are capable of distinguishing between quantities of three and four, although the trusty insects come unstuck at finer differences; they fail to differentiate between four and five, which made her wonder. According to Howard, honeybees are quite accomplished mathematicians. 'Recently, honeybees were shown to learn the rules of "less than" and "greater than" and apply these rules to evaluate numbers from zero to six', she says. Maybe numeracy wasn't the bees' problem; was it how the question was posed? The duo publishes their discovery that bees can discriminate between four and five if the training procedure is correct in Journal of Experimental Biology.

Apple removed a smartphone app that allows Hong Kong activists to report police movements from its online store Thursday after an official Chinese newspaper accused the company of facilitating illegal behavior.

In a vast expanse of the South stretching from Texas to Maryland, there are growing concerns for the cattle, cotton and corn amid a worsening drought fueled this past summer by record high temperatures.

People who illegally ride off-road vehicles, such as dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles, on city streets suffer similar crash injuries as motorcyclists, but are less likely to die even though many riders don't wear helmets, according to a Rutgers researcher.

Cracks in the desert floor appear random to the untrained eye, even beautifully so, but the mathematics governing patterns of dried clay turn out to be predictable—and useful in designing advanced materials.

Millions of people around the world are affected by pain, a multidimensional experience characterized by interactions between our emotional, cognitive, sensory and motor functions. Because pain is a complex condition, treating it efficiently continues to pose challenge for physicians.

A study recently published by researchers from the Ohio Musculoskeletal and Neurological Institute (OMNI) at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, in collaboration with a colleague from outside Ohio University, finds new evidence to support the belief that the nervous system plays an important role in age-related weakness.

Despite their wishes, many patients die in hospitals or other facilities. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death both globally and in the U.S., yet little is known about where patients with CVD die. In a new study, Haider Warraich, MD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital, and colleagues assessed place of death for CVD patients from 2003 to 2017, finding that home has surpassed the hospital as the most common place of death for these patients. The results of their analysis are published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Individuals with sickle cell disease (SCD) face the burdens of chronic illness and often racial disparities, both of which may increase vulnerability to adverse social determinants of health (SDoH). For children with SCD, living in poverty is associated with lower quality of life, higher healthcare utilization and higher complication rates. However, a new study from Boston Medical Center (BMC) demonstrates that hematologists can uncover the needs of families and connect them to local resources within a clinic visit with the hope of improving quality of life and clinical outcomes for their patients.

The stereotype that associates being "brilliant" with White men more than White women is shared by children regardless of their own race, finds a team of psychology researchers. By contrast, its study shows, children do not apply this stereotype to Black men and women.

Patients with depression, anxiety or stress are more likely to drop out of cardiac rehabilitation, reports a study published on World Mental Health Day in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).